


A Future Averted

by azurefishnets



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurefishnets/pseuds/azurefishnets
Summary: A timeline averted and a meeting ten years after is just one way it could go. But sometimes, a mother's will is too strong for that pattern to be the one that endures.
Relationships: Alma & Lynne
Comments: 1
Kudos: 15





	A Future Averted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siver/gifts).



Alma rang the doorbell, peering at the piece of paper in her hand with the hastily scrawled address.This was the right place, wasn’t it? It seemed so, but…this house looked as if no one lived here. It was large, larger than her own, but there were no touches of life at the windows or on the porch by way of decorations or houseplants. It was clean, tidy, spotless even, with perfect, mundane landscaping, but it looked like a showplace for a realtor. No one came to the door and she rang the bell again, but all was silent.

Kamila, bundled and warm in her stroller, began to cry, a wail of fury and anguish that split the quiet chill of the early afternoon. The kitten snuggled in with her looked up and meowed.

“Yes, Sissel, I hear her, I hear her,” Alma reassured him. She looked around. “I’m betting she needs a change…oh, I wish she’d done this before we left the house. We’re blocks away…” she dug into the bag hanging on the back of the stroller. “Well, I do have diapers, at least.” She looked down at her daughter. “Can you wait just a few minutes while we get you home?”

Kamila only wailed louder, her face going red and wrinkly with the force of her fury. The kitten’s eyes went wide. If Alma hadn’t known better, she would say he looked panicked.

“Umm… excuse me, miss…” Alma looked up and met the eyes of the red-haired girl who had opened the door after all. “Is she OK?”

Alma nodded. “She needs to be changed, I think. I was just about to go home and do it, but…”

“I’m not supposed to let strangers in but…” the girl wrung her hands. “You’d better come in. It’s cold out there and she’s…um. She’s so loud! Are all babies like that?”

“In my limited experience, yes,” Alma told her, smiling wryly. “Thank you, I’ll take you up on that.” She rolled the stroller inside and wrinkled her nose as she took the bundled baby out. “Oof, you didn’t stint, did you, sweetheart?”

The girl held her hands over her nose, eyes wide. “Wow,” she said in a muffled voice. “That’s really strong…”

“I’m afraid so,” Alma replied, grimacing. “Do you have a washroom near?”

Nodding, the girl directed her down the hallway. Alma scurried, Kamila still making her rage known, and got her changed with quick, competent hands. Thank goodness she had extra clothes in the bag, she thought, grimacing, and changed those too, bundling all the rest away for later cleaning or disposal. She didn’t feel right, somehow, about leaving the dirty diaper here in this spotlessly clean washroom with its empty trashcan, but leave it she did, tied into the bag so as not to smell too much.

She and Kamila came back out, Kamila already beginning to calm, and the girl looked up from playing with Sissel.

“He’s so cute! Does he always go on walks with you?”

Alma shot Sissel an amused look; he gave her his best kitten eyes back. “Well, we haven’t had him long,” she said, “but yes, he seems to enjoy it.” She knelt next to them on the floor. “I hope you’re Lynne, after all this?”

The girl shot her a wary look and scooted further away on her knees. “How did you know that?”

Alma brandished a toy badge she’d filched from Jowd for just such an occasion. “I’m Detective Jowd’s wife, Alma. See? I have a badge just like the one he gave you.”

“That big detective is married to _you_?” Lynne exclaimed. “You’re so pretty!” She blushed. “I- I mean…”

Alma laughed, taken by surprise. “Well, thank you! That’s sweet of you to say. You’re so pretty too! Your hair is such a beautiful color.” She looked around. The inside of the house was just as clean and lifeless as the outside, plain and neutral furniture sitting nearly untouched in a large room with neutral walls. It was like sitting in a waiting room instead of a living space. Alma shot a sidelong glance at the girl. It was somewhat surprising, she thought, that this bright flame lived in such a dull place. “I was hoping to speak to your parents,” she said. “Jowd is still in the hospital, but he wanted me to make sure you were all right.”

Lynne gave her a suspicious look. “Wouldn’t it have been better to send another policema--policeperson?”

Alma laughed, pleased with the girl’s instincts. “Yes, but he wanted me to come instead. I suppose he thought I’d be a friendlier face than just another uniform.” She didn’t say that he’d told her to bring Sissel and let him meet Lynne. He’d been oddly intense about it, as if something very important hinged on this meeting, but this was such a normal scene. A girl playing with a kitten, who batted and jumped most satisfyingly at a piece of string dangled above his waiting paws. Alma shrugged. Just another oddity to add to the stack of them she’d noticed since the accident—she’d pull this, too, out of her recalcitrant husband along with the explanations for everything else, as soon as she got him home.

Lynne had turned her attention to Kamila, who was giggling at Sissel. “She looks just like you,” she said, awed. “I thought babies just looked like wrinkly old people.”

“Oh, I think she’ll take more after her father in the end,” Alma said lightly. “She’s got his nose…and she already laughs like him!”

At that moment Kamila let out a chortle at Sissel, who whisked his tail across her hands and away again, too fast for her baby reflexes (Alma hoped, anyway). Lynne looked dubious, but laughed too. “I don’t know about that, but she sure is cute!”

Alma beamed at her, pleased as always with a compliment to her daughter. “So might I speak to your parents?” she asked again. “I wanted to ask them—and you!—to the awards ceremony they’re having in Jowd’s honor.”

Lynne squirmed, looking a little uncomfortable. “My parents aren’t here,” she said, her voice resolutely matter-of-fact. “They work overseas.”

“But…” Alma looked around at the plain, clean, dull house. “Surely you don’t live alone? Why aren’t you with them?”

Lynne drew her knees in, clutching them with one arm while allowing Kamila to hold on to a finger of her other hand. “One works in one country and one works in another, and they said it wasn’t fair if I lived with one and not the other,” she said in a rush, looking stoic, as if she’d practiced the words in a mirror. “So… we have a live-in housekeeper.”

Alma pressed her lips together and said in as neutral a tone as she could manage, “That must be hard for you. I’m sure you miss your parents…”

“Oh, but I’m so mature for my age,” Lynne burst out, the cadences and inflections of her speech exactly mirroring something she must have been told too many times. “It’s OK! I take care of myself most of the time!”

“W-well, may I speak to your housekeeper?” Alma said, “We’d be happy to have them as our guest in your parent’s absence.””

Lynne looked even more uncomfortable. “She, um… she quit. This morning.”

“Pardon me?” Alma was sure she hadn’t heard the child right. Surely no one would just abandon her.

“She said I was always getting in trouble and this thing with the police was the last straw,” Lynne explained, her voice unhappy. “We…kind of had a fight and she told me I’d probably end up in jail too, because I’d run away that morning Detective Jowd saved me. I told my parents, and they told me a new one would be here soon, so I was waiting for them to arrive but…but…”

Alma cocked her head. “But what?”

“But it’s been all day and I’m kinda hungry,” Lynne burst out. “I was trying to make something to eat when you came but I, um…” she wrung her hands again. “I only know how to roast yams over an open fire, and um, I can’t go back to that park so I didn’t know where to make one. But…” she looked fierce. “I’m _not_ gonna end up in jail. I’m gonna be a strong, cool detective, like Detective Jowd. I’m not sorry for making her go away. She was horrible.”

Alma looked at her and burned inside. This was no life for this beautiful spark of a child, who deserved so much and was so obviously bright and curious. Her flame should be tended, encouraged. She longed to reach out and hold her, as she would her own daughter if she’d been abandoned by everyone.

“You know what?” she said at last, her voice gentle. “Let’s go get some dinner and then you come home with me for right now, all right?” There’d be trouble about this, probably. There were agencies and rules in place for these situations, but Alma would call Cabanela and he’d help her sort this out, she was sure. And she would have that “housekeeper’s” head for this too, if it was the last thing she did this evening. “We can call your parents and let them know, OK?”

“I don’t want to bother them,” Lynne said, wringing her hands again. “They’re so busy…and I shouldn’t go someplace with a stranger.”

“That’s very smart, and you’re right,” Alma said, nodding, and she took Lynne’s hand, handing her the toy badge to clutch. “How about if we call Jowd first and he can tell you my story is true? You’d remember his voice, right? And don’t worry,” she added, “It won’t take but a moment, and I know he’d love to hear from you. What would you like for dinner, do you think?”

“Chicken!” Lynne cried, her voice joyful and childlike as it hadn’t been a moment before. “Roast chicken is my favorite!”

Alma sighed, but with a smile. “Oh, you and Jowd will get along fine. Do you want to come with me to the hospital to visit him before we head to my house? We can bring him some too.”

“If…if my parents say it’s OK,” Lynne said, then glowed. “But if they do, then yes, please!”

Alma shared a glance with Sissel, who looked back at her with his inscrutable golden gaze and blinked lazily. She had a sense of one pathway to one future closing, and another opening, different than she’d imagined perhaps, but a pathway that made a great glowing pattern writ in the warmth of home and family for Lynne and Kamila both, a future where they were close as sisters and wrapped in the protections a detective’s family could grant.

“All right, then,” she said, and got briskly to her feet. “Watch Kamila for a moment, let me borrow your phone, and we’ll get this all figured out.”

**Author's Note:**

> You say "Post-canon: Jowd’s Lynne’s hero. Kamila’s her little sister (and that’s that). What’s some bonding for Lynne and Alma look like?" and that's my catnip. I literally cannot resist. So happy Ghost Swap 2020, dear friend, and I hope you enjoy this look into how it really should have been post-canon!


End file.
